Protecting The Environment And Owning A Custom Car - Zero Clearance

Our nation won the Cold War with Russia by outmarketing them. Those clever devils on Madison Avenue painted such an enticing picture about the way the rest of the world perceived life in America that those poor commie pinkos in Russia didn't stand a chance. The desire Madison Avenue created to have a Pepsi or walk a mile for a Camel was so strong that even the most powerful man in Russia couldn't resist. Then premier Nikita Khrushchev attempted to defect to the U.S. by seeking asylum behind the castle walls of Disneyland. Many years later, history revealed that Khrushchev was very distraught over the fact that his country's best engineers were inept to the degree that they were incapable of producing a portable television set that didn't weigh less than 400 pounds. Erroneously, after Russian spies eavesdropped on U.S. citizens remarking that the Renault Dauphine "looked real Mickey Mouse," they reported back to Khrushchev-who regarded the little French car, with its city and country horn, as one of the engineering marvels of the 20th century-who became convinced that Mickey Mouse must be the name of America's god of engineering. The American spies knew all about this at the time and convinced the president of the United States not to let Khrushchev go to Disneyland.

We are at war once again, only this time it is not against another world superpower. The battle at hand is to save the very environment that sustains human life. Obviously, this is quite a serious matter, and handling it must be entrusted to those who have humanity's best interests at heart. Some feel that the best way to approach this challenge is to have America's marketing machine implant the notion that it is fashionable to be ecologically minded into the consciousness of our nation's citizenry. This is good; we agree that people should be ecologically aware, but we disagree with some of the dishonest marketing tactics employed in the name of ecology. By the time this issue hits the newsstands, there should be well over one million E85-capable flex-fuel vehicles in California with a cute little green leaf on an emblem that proclaims to the owner's peers that he is doing his part. Hey, that's cool, but unfortunately the fact of the matter is that California still has only one location where its population of 35,893,799 million people can fill up with E85.

It is with this same lack of common sense and honesty that some people with bad intentions are waging a war against what little is left of America's pool of collectable vehicles. The scheme is to convince the average citizen that it is fashionably uncool to have anything to do with an older vehicle and imperative to rid them of it. If this doesn't work, the next step-and it is already happening in California-is to pass legislation that will create prohibitively high registration fees and annual programs that will make ownership of an older vehicle unbearable, leaving the next stop for the potential classic the crusher.

Fortunately, it is not all doom and gloom for enthusiasts of older cars and trucks. We have a voice on our side to combat the rhetoric the car haters are spewing to mainstream America. The people on our side are the folks at SEMA, and they are experts at presenting a lot of facts and figures to our legislators that they might not have been aware of or might not have considered.

Just off the top of my head, I know that the customized classic trucks we all drive are loaded with modifications that have made them more environmentally friendly. Let's take, for example, the brakes. Not only do they no longer contain asbestos, but thanks to aftermarket upgrades, the truck's stopping distance has been cut in half, and what once would have been a grotesque flattened lump of bloody roadkill on the highway will now live to greet little Suzy or Johnny at the mailbox as the cherished pet the whole family loves and adores. Moving on to the engine, I won't get quite so descriptive, but as you all know, the high-performance V-8s we like to swap in consume half the gasoline of the old engine it replaced, and emit a fraction of the pollutants into the atmosphere.

There are more good reasons to cite, but I'd like to wrap my editorial up using the latest trendy ecological yardstick to ask this: How many million barrels of oil could be saved by recycling a vintage truck instead of manufacturing a new one? I wondered this while listening to a guy on National Public Radio talking about a phenomenal number of barrels being saved just by modifying some kind of manufacturing procedure.

It sounds like a horrible fascist nightmare on TV, but the reality is that some local and state officials are already enforcing laws enacted to seize private property. To learn what can be done to defeat these laws, log onto www.semasan.com.-John Gilbert